


Close Encounter

by Brumeier



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alien Abduction, Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: romancingmcshep, Dysfunctional Family, First Kiss, First Meetings, M/M, amputee John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3275183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's friends can't stop talking about alien abductions, but he knows better: ain't no such thing. At least until he gets beamed aboard a space ship and offered the opportunity of a lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [Taste_is_Sweet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/pseuds/Taste_is_Sweet), for yet another amazing beta job and your continued cheerleading!
> 
> I wrote this for [Romancing McShep](http://romancingmcshep.livejournal.com/). This isn't based on a posted prompt, but just one of my own bunnies.

“There’s no such thing as aliens,” John said. He closed one eye and looked blearily at the bottom of the beer mug in his hand. There wasn’t much more than a swallow left.

“Riley Jackson saw the lights, night before last,” Mel replied around a mouthful of pretzels.

John rolled his eyes. Riley was an idiot. He didn’t care how many people had seen strange lights in the sky lately, aliens were just science fiction. There wasn’t enough beer in the bar to convince him otherwise.

“What about those people, said they was abducted?” AJ leaned across Mel so he could point at John. “Woke up in strange places, missing time. What about that?”

“You have one more shot of Jack and _you’re_ gonna be missing some time.”

That got Mel laughing, and he almost choked on the pretzels. 

John debated having another beer but decided against it. As it was, he still stood a chance of getting home under his own steam. He was grateful that he had his own place, the one thing he’d fought his father on when he agreed to come back after his medical discharge from the Air Force.

“I’m out, guys.” John threw some tip money on the bar and carefully slid off the stool. The stabilizers in his artificial knee kept his prosthetic leg steady even as the other one wobbled a bit.

“You need a ride?” AJ offered.

“Not if I want to live,” John snorted. AJ was three sheets to the wind, as always. He knew the bartender would collect keys and call the boys a cab. “I’ll be fine.”

“Watch out for aliens!” Mel called after him on his way out the door. John flipped him off.

It was a warm night, clear except for a few wispy clouds scudding through the starlit sky. John couldn’t help looking up, thinking of everything he’d lost. He’d been part of the sky once, until that ill-fated rescue mission in Afghanistan. The loss of his leg had been secondary, really.

His apartment was only a couple blocks away, and he always walked when he could. His gait wasn’t what it used to be but he liked to think that most people couldn’t tell that he only had one real leg. It was pretty quiet this time of night, which was why John had chosen to live outside the city and commute to work; he didn’t like being surrounded by a large press of people. Unfortunately, it also meant that no-one was around when the beam of white light came out of the sky and surrounded him.

“What the fu –”

There was a sudden pulling sensation, a stomach-dropping bit of motion, and then a second, stronger light hit John and everything faded to black.

*o*o*o*

John came awake slowly, mouth dry and a weird tingling sensation in his extremities. He was lying down on something moderately soft but nothing about the room he was in looked familiar. That helped clear some of the cobwebs out of his head and he sat up, quickly scanning his surroundings. There was one exit – a closed metal door with no window – and four metal walls. The only thing in the room besides John was the bunk he was sitting on.

The last thing he remembered was the white light. And maybe there was some credence to the alien abduction story after all, because the tiny metal room certainly wasn’t the local Holiday Inn Express. John pressed his hand to the wall and he could feel a very subtle vibration. Whatever he was in, he’d swear it was moving.

_Mr. Sheppard, please don’t be alarmed._

John went absolutely still at the sound of the disembodied voice. He looked up at the ceiling but he couldn’t see anything like an obvious camera, though someone clearly knew he was awake.

_Please look under your bunk. You’ll find a box containing a cylindrical object._

He didn’t move. If someone wanted him to follow orders they could damn well tell him so to his face.

_Is this thing even working? Novak…no, okay. Listen, Mr. Sheppard. No-one’s going to hurt you, okay?_

“Who are you?”

_I’m the guy asking you to take out the thing under the bunk. You do that and then this is all over and you can go back to what I’m sure is a very exciting existence in Podunk, USA._

The voice sounded male, and John didn’t think that aliens were supposed to be that expressively crabby. He weighed his options, and decided he may as well do what was being asked, if it meant getting out of the room and back home.

There was a plain wooden box just behind John’s feet, four inches square. Nestled in the foam insert was a shiny metal ball etched with wavy lines all around the circumference. 

_Good. That’s good. Now, look at the cylinder and think about where we are in the universe._

John opened his mouth to politely suggest that he was not some kind of trained monkey, and if they wanted to watch him do stupid shit then he’d tell them where they could stick their metal ball. But before he could say anything a 3D, holographic representation of the solar system filled the small room in Technicolor detail.

“Did I do that?” He reflexively clutched the box tighter, eyes wide as he watched planets and moons and asteroid belts move in silent ellipses around each other.

_Holy shit! Are you seeing this?_

“What the hell is going on?” John asked a little desperately.

_Hang on, I’m coming down! Don’t go anywhere!_

He wanted to know just where the hell he was supposed to go, and as soon as he had that thought the hologram changed. Whole galaxies went zipping past at a dizzying rate, little contrails of light left behind in John’s vision. When it stopped moving there was one planet filling the room and it wasn’t Earth. This particular celestial body looked like it was mostly water, with very little land to break up the vast swaths of blue.

The door to the room burst open, clanging hard against the wall, and in came a man that looked as far removed from an alien as possible: solidly built, with broad shoulders and short brown hair that was standing up in little wisps. He gaped at the hologram, and then turned his piercing blue gaze on John.

“How did you know to find Lantea?”

“What?”

“That!” he said impatiently, pointing at the water planet. “How did you find that?”

“I don’t know!”

“You have to tell me! What were you thinking? Before this came up what were you thinking?”

John shrugged. “I was wondering where you thought I was going to go, since I assumed the door was locked.”

“Jackson’s never going to believe this!” The guy looked excited, his crooked mouth twisted up in a grin. “You’re exactly what we need!”

“Who the hell are you? How did I get here?” John half-expected the ball to show him that too, but the hologram of the big blue planet just kept lazily spinning. He scowled at the ball, wondering how to turn it off, and just like that the thing shut itself down and Lantea winked out of existence.

“Oh, right. Dr. Rodney McKay.”

_Dr. McKay, report._

“I’m bringing Sheppard up to the conference room. We need him, he’s the one we’ve been looking for,” McKay said to a new disembodied voice.

_Wait for the guards._

“What? Why? Where’s he going to go? We’re in low orbit, it’s not like he’s going to jump out and run off.”

“Low orbit?” John licked his lips, suddenly nervous. “You really are aliens, aren’t you?”

McKay snorted. “Relax, your ass is safe. Come along, Sheppard. There are some things you need to know.”

The man turned and left, obviously expecting John to follow. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, and it was better than being locked in a room with no way out; at least if he was able to see the rest of the …spaceship?… he stood a better chance at coming up with an exit strategy.

He set the box on the bunk and pushed himself up. Low orbit but they weren’t floating around so wherever he was they had artificial gravity. It was way more advanced than anything he’d trained on.

“So where are we?” John asked, hurrying to catch up with the maybe-alien. Who was filling out the blue shirt he was wearing very nicely, and really, now was not the time to get distracted by the first pretty face he’d seen in months. Especially if it didn’t turn out to be a human face.

“We’re on board the _Daedalus_ , a class 304 ship that only a very select group of people on Earth know about. And no, we’re not aliens. We’re all humans here.” McKay turned and grinned at him. “Well, most of us are.”

*o*o*o*

John sat in the conference room – on the spaceship! – and stared blankly at the far wall. McKay and Colonel Caldwell had just filled him in on things he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Good aliens, bad aliens, and a war being fought in some far-off galaxy that required someone with a souped-up gene. Specifically, they needed him. In fact, and that part was kind of funny, all the alien abduction stories were actually McKay and his people tracking expressions of the gene and coming up short every time.

“Here. You look like you could use this.” 

After dumping this all in his lap at least they’d given him to the room to himself, and time to gather his thoughts. McKay was back with a tablet and a bottle of water, which John took gratefully, draining half of it in one go.

“It’s a lot to take in.” McKay settled into a chair opposite John. “And I don’t feel like the Colonel outlined the perks well enough, because there are some pretty good ones.”

“You’re asking me to go to war against soul-sucking _aliens_.”

McKay gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Come with me.”

Once again John found himself moving through the narrow corridors, passing armed Marines and people in green jumpsuits. He didn’t know what McKay thought he could show him that would make him want to get involved in another war. The last one didn’t end so well for him.

“Maybe this’ll help you decide.” They came to a large door marked F-302 Bay and McKay entered a sequence of numbers into the keypad mounted on the wall. When it slid open John took two steps in and then stopped, frozen. 

It was a hangar full of sleek black fighter planes of a type John had never seen before. The desire to get behind the yoke and take one for a spin was almost overwhelming, and he had to clench his hands into fists to remind himself that he wasn’t allowed anymore.

“F-302 Fighters. They come equipped with rocket boosters, a hyperdrive engine, and regular air-breathing jets. Inertial dampeners, dual railguns, and AIM air-to-air missles.” McKay ran his hand along the edge of a wing. 

“I can’t,” John said, his voice a little rough. “I can’t fly. Anymore.”

McKay gave him a questioning look, and then waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, the leg? Not a factor. Oh, maybe I should’ve mentioned that first? We can give you a prosthetic that has all the sensitivity of an actual limb.”

“What?” John was having a hard time parsing what McKay was saying. It sounded like…like they’d let him fly. And not just a jet, but a _spaceship_.

“On Atlantis we have Gate Ships. They’re not as elegant as these, but you need to have a gene to operate them and we don’t have many pilots. We need someone with your kind of flight experience.”

Words weren’t possible, not around the lump in John’s throat. Getting back in the sky suddenly seemed like a decent trade-off for fighting some far-off battle. McKay made an exasperated noise.

“I hope I didn’t break your brain. Listen, take this.” He pushed the tablet into John’s hands. “Everything about the Atlantis expedition is on there. Read through it, and then tomorrow let me know what you want to do. Keep in mind that the salary is incredibly competitive and you’ll have full medical.”

“I’m not military,” John finally croaked out. Surely anyone piloting one of these ships had to be military, even though he’d been told that the original expedition had been mostly civilian.

“Do you need a rank to fly? Honestly, is this how smart you really are? Because someone with your gene expression should be a little brighter.”

“Is that part of the hard sell?” John grinned in spite of himself, the constriction in his chest easing a little.

“Oh, ha ha.” McKay crossed his arms over his chest, showing off his biceps to good effect. “I’ll have you know I’m a legitimate genius, and I don’t want to get stuck working with someone of below-average intelligence.”

“Would it help to know I passed the Mensa test?” It wasn’t something John usually told people, and really he’d only taken the test in the first place to see if he could do it. It was worth letting the cat out of the bag in this instance, though, if just to see the way McKay’s jaw hit the floor.

“You’re in Mensa?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“But… you passed the test. Why wouldn’t you join?”

John shrugged. “I’m not really a joiner.”

“Says the former Air Force pilot.” McKay shook his head. “Come on, let me show you to your bunk. You must be tired.”

Sleep? John wasn’t sure he’d ever sleep again. How could he when the promise of flight was close enough to touch?

“And make sure you read those files, Mensa boy,” McKay said as they left the hangar. “If you’re as smart as you think you are you’ll say ‘yes’.”

“I’m not a joiner,” John reminded him.

“Some things are worth joining, Sheppard.”

*o*o*o*

John stood on the observation deck watching the Earth rotate below, beautiful and distant. Funny how peaceful it looked from so far away, no sign of the endless conflicts and struggles and day-to-day dramas. He wondered what it would be like to leave it behind, to leave everything he knew; maybe not that much different from joining the Air Force and going to Afghanistan.

He’d spent hours reading through the Atlantis reports that McKay had furnished him with. It was pretty grim stuff. They’d lost a lot of people to the Wraith, and to altercations with other Pegasus natives. The entire first year of the expedition they’d been cut off from Earth and forced to manage on their own with limited resources. The whole process had been made even more difficult because the only person at the SGC with a strong enough gene was General O’Neill and apparently there was no moving him to another galaxy.

“You know what’s funny?” McKay asked, coming up behind John. “I’ve spent the majority of my life living on Earth but now it seems as alien to me as Lantea did at first.”

“Do you regret it?” John asked, honestly curious.

“Did you read the files?”

“A lot of them.”

Rodney shrugged, and he was standing so close that John could feel it. “Surprisingly, no. For all the nightmare stuff there’s a payoff. The tech alone is like a wet dream.”

John couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out of him. “You going back?”

“That’s where I belong,” McKay replied. 

It sounded simple on the surface but John had read the reports; he knew how many times the man beside him had saved everyone’s lives on the expedition. How many times he’d put himself in harm’s way. John wondered what it was like, to feel that tied to a place that you couldn’t stay away from it even if chances were high you’d die there.

“You could too,” McKay said softly. “We need you there, Sheppard. And trust me, I don’t ask nicely for just anyone. Any member of my staff will tell you I’m the most miserable person to work for in two galaxies.”

“I don’t know. You seem okay to me.”

“Clearly you need to have your head examined.” Despite his words McKay looked genuinely pleased, his crooked mouth twisted up into something that was almost a smile. “So, what did you decide?”

John shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He pulled his lucky coin out of his pocket and flipped it over the knuckles of one hand before he tossed it up in the air.

“Wait, you can’t –”

He caught the coin and slapped it to the back of his other hand. “Heads I stay, tails I go.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m leaving it up to fate,” John replied. He lifted his hand and took a look at the coin. Heads. Then he glanced over at McKay, who looked alternately horrified and hopeful. What would it be like to get to know him better?

“Well?”

“You’re in luck. It’s tails.”

*o*o*o*

“I don’t understand.” Patrick Sheppard sat rigidly behind his desk, staring at his firstborn with a familiar expression. John remembered seeing it when he told his father he was joining the Air Force.

“I’m going to be out of touch for a while and I wanted you to know.”

Patrick looked back down at the letter John had given him, printed on official US Government letterhead and signed by General Jack O’Neill himself. John had no idea how McKay had produced it so quickly but he wasn’t asking questions.

“What use could they possibly have for you?”

Even though John been expecting that reaction from his father it still hurt. He would’ve liked to blame it on the leg but the truth was he’d been hearing riffs on that same theme his whole life. He’d been a disappointment to his father almost from birth, or so it seemed.

“I’m gonna be instructing pilots,” he explained – again – with the last of his patience. “It’s for a classified project.”

“You know they won’t let you fly.”

“Dad…”

“No.” Patrick smacked his hands on the desk and stood up. “I refuse to allow it. I’ve given you a good life and I won’t let you throw it away.”

John gritted his teeth and had to struggle not to curl his hands into fists. His father had never understood him. Never even tried.

“You know what, Dad? I –”

There was a sudden ruckus from just outside the office door, which then burst open. Rodney McKay swept in, shrugging off Patrick’s admin assistant.

“Sheppard, it’s time to go. Did I not express to you the very tight timeline we’re operating under?”

John looked from McKay to his father, taking in Patrick’s thunderous expression and knowing that everything was about to go to hell.

“Who are you?” Patrick asked angrily.

“Dr. Rodney McKay, Chief Science Officer for the classified program that your son is now part of. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sheppard, but we both know that’s not true.” McKay turned to John. “You ready?”

“My son isn’t going anywhere with you. I don’t know if he told you but he’s disabled. Whatever you want him to do he’s not fit for it.”

John felt himself flushing, embarrassed that McKay had to see how his father treated him. “I came here as a courtesy, Dad. Which was a mistake, I guess.”

McKay narrowed his eyes at John, and then looked over at Patrick. “Just one thing before we go. Your son is going to save a lot of lives. In fact, according to his military record he _has_ saved lives. He’s a goddamn hero. And I can see he owes absolutely none of that to you.”

Patrick was rapidly turning purple with indignation, and John’s mouth was hanging open, but McKay ignored both of them. He grabbed hold of John’s arm and tugged him out of the office.

“Let’s go, Sheppard. We still have to clean out your apartment.”

Emboldened by McKay’s display, John looked over his shoulder and grinned at his father. “See you around, Dad.”

*o*o*o*

It was late and John had been reading more of the mission reports. They were two days into the eighteen day trip that it would take to reach the Atlantis, the same city the Wraith had nearly destroyed in a siege that had gone on for days. It was only the timely arrival of the _Daedalus_ and the genius of Rodney McKay that had staved off disaster. McKay’s name was in those reports over and over again, repeatedly pulling everyone’s fat out of the fire. He was a bona fide hero.

When John had to fight to keep his eyes open he powered down the tablet and got ready for bed. The last thing he did was to detach the leg and slide it under the bunk. He rolled the liner off his truncated limb and replaced it with a black wool sock. The phantom pain had been coming less and less, for which he was thankful, and it didn’t make him nauseous anymore to look at his stump. Progress.

There was a perfunctory knock on the door and then it slid open, revealing McKay. 

“Hey, Sheppard, I…” He trailed off, gaze locked firmly on John’s stump.

John frowned and resisted the urge to cover himself with a blanket. “Something I can help you with, McKay?”

“No, I just. Do you have everything you need?” McKay dragged his eyes back up to meet John’s. 

“Why? You got a mint for my pillow?” John didn’t know why he was so annoyed. It wasn’t like he could blame McKay for being distracted by his missing leg, not when the prosthetic was hidden from view most of the time. Maybe he was afraid of proving his father right. What if they didn’t have any use for him after all? What if they reneged on letting him fly?

“Can I sit down?” McKay didn’t wait for John to agree before he made himself comfortable on one of the fold-down seats that was normally flush with the wall. “Are you having second thoughts? Because that’s perfectly natural. I mean, this is a really big step and everything, what you’re doing.”

“No second thoughts,” John said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just worried about a bait and switch, I guess.”

“You think we won’t let you fly? Don’t be stupid! You read the reports, you know how badly we need pilots. You think that,” McKay gestured at John’s leg. “Is going to dissuade anyone from letting you behind the wheel? Not that it’s an actual wheel, of course, but you understand what I’m getting at.”

John fought back a smile. McKay’s no-nonsense tone and his tendency to babble made him seem trustworthy, like he wouldn’t be any good at lying even if he tried. It was kind of refreshing, after dealing with his smoothly duplicitous father for so long.

“Tell you what I can do,” McKay said. “I can walk you through the controls of the F-302, and as soon as we come out of hyperdrive I’ll take you out and you can fly your first spaceship.”

He leaned forward, looking so earnest. As if he still needed to convince John to stay. Then again, it was foolish not to take advantage of an opportunity to fly one of those sleek fighter jets.

“Okay.”

“Okay? Just like that?” McKay gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Do you play chess?”

“I’ve been known to.”

“Tomorrow. We’ll see how you are at strategy.”

John rolled his eyes. “Can I get some shut-eye now?”

“What? Oh. Right.” McKay’s face flushed and he hastily regained his feet, folding the chair back into the wall as he did so. “Well then. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” 

After McKay had gone John turned out the light and tried to find a comfortable position on the bunk. He hoped the sleeping arrangements were better on Atlantis. Presumably there’d at least be windows; he was starting to feel a little closed in. 

He fell asleep plotting ways to beat McKay at chess.

*o*o*o*

Chess with McKay became a daily competition. He kept classifying it as a test even though John won eight out of ten games on average. They managed to fit it in between lessons in Ancient language and tech, reviewing the F-302 manuals, and getting a crash course in everyday life on Atlantis.

There wasn’t as much downtime as John had originally planned, but he didn’t mind. He was getting to know McKay pretty well, and that certainly wasn’t a hardship. He learned that McKay was allergic to citrus, had a mind that ran on several different tracks at once, and enjoyed watching sci-fi movies and television shows just so he could pick apart the faulty science.

He learned that McKay was into guys.

“Ha! Check-mate, you smug, spiky-haired bastard!” McKay tipped over John’s queen with joyful abandon. “Didn’t see that coming, did you?”

“Pretty cocky for someone who lost the last three games.” John said amiably. “You want another go?”

“Not tonight. I’ll need your leg, though.”

John was sure he heard that wrong. “What?”

“Your leg. I need it.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

McKay rolled his eyes. “Yes, ha ha. Very funny. Just…when you’re done with it for tonight. I’ll make sure you get it back first thing in the morning.”

John leaned back on the bed. “Planning on building a lamp out of it?”

“I think we can both agree that it lacks the requisite sex appeal.” Though the flush that immediately stained McKay’s cheeks seemed to say otherwise, which John found perplexing. “I need a better idea of how this prosthetic works before I can build you a better one.”

“Oh.” John had forgotten about the promise of a better leg, he’d been so focused on the flying thing. “You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to.” McKay looked endearingly earnest. “What happened to you is…is…and if I can help, I mean, what you’re doing for us is above and beyond. This is the least I can do.”

“Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of physical improvement.” John fervently hoped he wasn’t blushing. He was both pleased and embarrassed by McKay’s eagerness to help him, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

McKay muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘as if you need it’ and started packing up the chess pieces. John decided he’d reward McKay’s next chess win with some chocolate he’d bought off one of the techs, just to see him blush and sputter.

*o*o*o*

John didn’t realize they’d come out of hyperdrive until McKay tracked him down in the very tiny gym, running on the treadmill. He felt a little self-conscious because he had shorts on, which left the prosthetic leg out there for anyone to see, but McKay didn’t even give it a sideways glance. That warmed John from the inside out, and he had to fight to keep a bland expression on his face.

“What’s up, McKay? Wanna race?”

“Ha. Funny. No, we’re out of hyperdrive. Feel like taking an F-302 out for a spin?”

There was no hiding the grin this time. John turned off the treadmill and grabbed a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. “I’m ready when you are.”

McKay gave him a once-over and there was an appreciative look in his eyes that John had seen on more than one occasion. “I think maybe you need to get dressed first. Meet me at the hangar, I’ll have a flight suit waiting for you.”

He turned on his heel and left, and John enjoyed the view. There was definitely a mutual attraction there but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. His knee-jerk reaction was denial, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the Air Force anymore.

Mindful of the fact that he’d be in a very small enclosed space with another person, John swung by the locker room first for the world’s quickest shower. Five minutes after that he was in the F-302 bay, so full of anticipation that he could barely keep himself contained.

“What took you so long?” McKay tossed a flight suit at him, which matched the one McKay was wearing. John caught it with hands that trembled, just a little. “Let’s go. We’ll be in Lantea’s atmosphere in approximately two and a half hours, so we’re on a time limit.”

John suited up and followed McKay to the F-302 he’d had prepped for John’s first flight. McKay climbed in first, taking the navigator’s seat. John followed him, sliding into the pilot’s seat. He had to take a minute to catch his breath, hands running reverently over the instrument panel. This time it was for real, and not just practice.

He strapped into the seat, pulled on his helmet, and went through the steps to initialize the system. The ladder was wheeled away from the side of the fighter and secured, and then all personnel left the hangar.

“Well?” McKay asked, though he sounded more amused than impatient.

John switched on the mic. “Command, this is Sheppard. Are we cleared for take-off?”

_Roger that, Spaceman. Green is go._

The use of his old call sign was startling, and John was pretty sure he knew how they’d gotten that information: McKay, poking around in his files again. He knew he should be annoyed at the meddling but all he could feel was an electric burst of excitement up his spine. It was a dream recaptured, one he thought he’d had to give up on.

The main lights went down and yellow safety lights came up as the outer bay door opened. It was like a scene from a movie, the black void of space slowly revealed in front of John. 

“Mask on,” he told McKay, and then followed suit himself. He fired up the engines, the vibrations moving through the seat and beneath his skin in a familiar way.

The lights over the bay door went from yellow to green, and John throttled up. The F-302 burst out of the hangar like a missile and John couldn’t help whooping as he shot into space. The inertial dampeners cut back on the g-forces, which was weird at first, but then John went into a barrel roll followed by a vertical loop, and he couldn’t stop smiling behind the mask.

“Jeez, can’t you just fly normal?” McKay complained from behind him. “You’re making me air sick.”

“Air sick?” John chuckled and went into an inverted loop, Lantea serving as his horizon point. The tricks were fun, especially without the pull of g-forces, but just being at the controls was enough to put that swooping feeling in his gut again.

“You’re really good at this. I can see I made the right choice, which isn’t all that surprising.”

“Genius,” John replied. “I know.”

“All right, Spaceman. What else you got?”

“Hold on tight!” John warned, more than happy to oblige.

*o*o*o*

John stood in the fighter bay, adrenalin coursing through his system. His first flight as a civilian had been amazing, in ways he could never adequately put into words. He was waiting for McKay to finish talking to one of the guys from the maintenance crew. McKay wanted to take a look at John’s prosthetic and see how it was holding up to the stresses of space flight so that when he made the new one he could work in improvements.

Watching him was no hardship. McKay had very expressive hands and he tended to gesture a lot when he was talking, which was almost all the time. John felt like a starving man looking at an all-you-can-eat buffet. He was pretty sure it wasn’t just the adrenalin.

“You ready?” McKay asked, walking over. 

“Yeah.” John was more than ready: to take advantage of his newly cleaned slate, of the new life that had been given to him. Anything was possible, and he wasn’t military anymore. The only thing holding him back was himself, and he was done with that.

He wrapped his hand around McKay’s arm and tugged him closer. “Thanks.”

“What are you –” McKay started to say, eyes wide, and then John was kissing him. Kissing him and pressing against him and he was suddenly so incredibly turned on that there was no way McKay could miss it.

“Not here,” McKay gasped in his ear. “They’re watching.”

“Green is go,” John murmured back. His tongue skimmed over the shell of McKay’s ear. In return he was pinched, hard, on the tender skin of his wrist. “Hey! Ow!”

“Not. Here.” McKay grabbed a fistful of John’s flight suit and pulled him bodily out of the hangar.

John let himself be towed along, reveling in the ability to be out and open without having to worry about retribution and repercussions. It was incredibly freeing, and he used the opportunity to goose McKay.

“Stop that!” McKay hissed.

The crew members they passed didn’t seem overly concerned by the display. Most ignored them, though some snickered or wolf-whistled. One woman gave him a thumbs-up and a wink.

As soon as they got back to John’s quarters McKay had him pushed up against the wall, hands clutching John’s hips. “Everyone knows what we’re doing.”

“That a problem?” John asked, rocking his hips.

McKay’s eyes were dark with lust, and when he licked his lips something flipped over in John’s chest. He leaned in and kissed McKay, hard and messy, hands cupping the man’s ass through his flight suit.

“Hottest man in two galaxies who also happens to be Mensa-smart? No complaints from me,” McKay assured him. He pressed back against John. “Is this just because of the flying?”

“Not just.”

“See?” McKay grinned. “Smart.”

There was much less talking after that, but John didn’t mind. Less than a month ago he’d resigned himself to a land-based life and a desk job, and now he had everything he wanted and more. McKay had given him back the sky, given him something to live for. And maybe…someone he could curl up with at night.

“Welcome to the Pegasus galaxy,” McKay said, moving John to the bunk.

John grinned. “I think I’m gonna like it here.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** I forget why I was thinking about alien abductions, but when I did the next thing that popped in my head was, what if the alien was Rodney? And this fic was born! ::grins::


End file.
